A question for Gareth, Marcus and Raheem.

[sinkov]

Posed by Rod Liddle in the Speccy,

"I wonder if the moral guardians of our country — the England football team — intend to participate in the 2022 World Cup in Qatar? Most of the players are currently kicking their heels (and presumably missing) in such places as the Turks and Caicos Islands, so they have plenty of time for rumination. Having become, in the words of their manager, a ‘beacon of light’ within a country of savages and bigots, it will be interesting to see if their moral stance extends to boycotting a tournament which is to be held in a totalitarian slave state that outlaws homo***uality and isn’t entirely up to speed on the issue of women.

Further — graft, corruption and greed were among the reasons why Qatar was chosen in the first place. So will the England team shelve their ideals, or will they perhaps take the knee in remembrance of the Indian workers who died making the stadium in which they are playing? That, I suppose, would be the preferred option: more meaningless virtue-signalling. Pulling out of the World Cup would be, I think, the appropriate decision. But they don’t want to do that, do they?"

"Anyway, Gareth and the lads. Let us know what you are going to do about Qatar. Beacon of light or headlamp of hypocrisy? We’ll see."

I think we all know what they're going to do, when it affects their own careers, fatuous virtue-signalling gestures get put on hold. They're going, they'd be letting the country down if they didn't, wouldn't they ?

[ClaretinBudapest]

Posed by Rod Liddle in the Speccy,

"I wonder if the moral guardians of our country — the England football team — intend to participate in the 2022 World Cup in Qatar? Most of the players are currently kicking their heels (and presumably missing) in such places as the Turks and Caicos Islands, so they have plenty of time for rumination. Having become, in the words of their manager, a ‘beacon of light’ within a country of savages and bigots, it will be interesting to see if their moral stance extends to boycotting a tournament which is to be held in a totalitarian slave state that outlaws homo***uality and isn’t entirely up to speed on the issue of women.

Further — graft, corruption and greed were among the reasons why Qatar was chosen in the first place. So will the England team shelve their ideals, or will they perhaps take the knee in remembrance of the Indian workers who died making the stadium in which they are playing? That, I suppose, would be the preferred option: more meaningless virtue-signalling. Pulling out of the World Cup would be, I think, the appropriate decision. But they don’t want to do that, do they?"

"Anyway, Gareth and the lads. Let us know what you are going to do about Qatar. Beacon of light or headlamp of hypocrisy? We’ll see."

I think we all know what they're going to do, when it affects their own careers, fatuous virtue-signalling gestures get put on hold. They're going, they'd be letting the country down if they didn't, wouldn't they ?

>I think you have hit the nail on the head Sinkov.Do not hold your breath.

[wanderlust]

Might as well just scrap the World Cup, the Euros and the Olympics altogether. After all there isn't a country in the world that doesn't have ethical baggage. Maybe Tibet?

[Altobelli]

Nice piece by Rod Liddle, thanks for sharing Sinkov.

With a lot of high profile Footballers (I will not call them professionals as to fake injury with diving, yelping as loud as you can to cheat your so called professional colleagues ) they don't understand the real world as they are Multi Millionaires and can only comment on their own views, which with Mings, Stirling and Co they think they are spouting something important when in reality its just cheap look at me dross.

They will not take a second to digest or relate anything Liddle has mentioned, as it cuts off their only few meaning's to their life, which is being a superstar and letting the £'s roll in, they are poor at being a Professional and brain dead when they open their mouth, you can add Liniker and most of the other pundits to the above also.

[The Bedlington Terrier]

I think Liddle needs to remember just how Qatar will become the first Middle Eastern country to host the World Cup.

That old fraudster and raconteur Sepp Blatter, the former FIFA president, announced to the world, that 22 executive committee members had voted to award the 2022 tournament to a country of only 1.7m people, a country with an appalling human rights record.

It is impossible to ignore the allegations that bung and graft on a scale not seen since Cameron jumped on board the Greensill bandwagon managed to "persuade" the FIFA grafters to stave off outstanding rival bids from the United States, (who had been considered the favourites by many), as well as Australia, South Korea and Japan.

With corruption on this scale, I find it hard to imagine why any self respecting footballing nation would even bother to board an aeroplane to Qatar.

For Liddle to chide the England manager and a few select footballing mercenaries is a bit rich when the English FA and no doubt the British government, will be bagging zillions from this totally rotten to the core "tournament".

[sinkov]

Liddle knows very well how Qatar got the tournament BT, 2nd paragraph, 'graft, corruption and greed', did you miss that bit ?

Nevertheless, you make Rod's point for him,

"a country with an appalling human rights record."
"bung and graft on a scale not seen since Cameron jumped on board the Greensill bandwagon"
"corruption on this scale,"
"totally rotten to the core "tournament".

Good question for our virtue-signalling, millionaire wokesters, so keen to demonstrate their desire for justice, equality and human rights, are they the 'beacon of light' Gareth says they are, or as Rod suspects the 'headlamp of hypocrisy.' ?

I'll give you three guesses BT, and you can say sh1t twice.

[The Bedlington Terrier]

Liddle knows very well how Qatar got the tournament BT, 2nd paragraph, 'graft, corruption and greed', did you miss that bit ?

Nevertheless, you make Rod's point for him,

"a country with an appalling human rights record."
"bung and graft on a scale not seen since Cameron jumped on board the Greensill bandwagon"
"corruption on this scale,"
"totally rotten to the core "tournament".

Good question for our virtue-signalling, millionaire wokesters, so keen to demonstrate their desire for justice, equality and human rights, are they the 'beacon of light' Gareth says they are, or as Rod suspects the 'headlamp of hypocrisy.' ?

I'll give you three guesses BT, and you can say sh1t twice.

The whole rotten Qatar 2022 World Cup enterprise is unconscionable sinkov. I'm going to try and dig up Liddle's response to the initial awarding of the tournament to Qatar and see just where the "headlamp of hypocrisy" shines.

[sinkov]

The whole rotten Qatar 2022 World Cup enterprise is unconscionable sinkov. I'm going to try and dig up Liddle's response to the initial awarding of the tournament to Qatar and see just where the "headlamp of hypocrisy" shines.

Let me know when you find it BT, I'll be very surprised if he was 'less than impressed' shall we say. He was on FIFA's case long before you and me.

[The Bedlington Terrier]

Let me know when you find it BT, I'll be very surprised if he was 'less than impressed' shall we say. He was on FIFA's case long before you and me.

Liddle aside, how on earth will we let this fiasco in Qatar run?

https://www.theguardian.com/football...-investigation

[wanderlust]

I worked in Qatar for two years in the late '70s importing British construction materials. It was like the wild west back in those days and amongst the obvious inequities was the wealth gap - although Qatari nationals had/have the best welfare state in the world including free houses etc - but only for them. No question about support for the Sheikh.
What interested me was the deal the British made to establish the country in the first place.
Basically there were two tribes that lived on the peninsula, one with 4000 people and the other - the Al Thanis - with 6000 people. In return for the oil rights, the Brits simply made the larger tribe "the royal family" and suppressed any disagreement from the other tribe. It explains a lot about the Qatari system of government.

If anyone hasn't seen Adam Curtis's incredible docufilm "Bitter Lake" which includes a lot of rare archive footage of western powers courting countries in the Middle East I highly recommend you do as it explains a lot of what's going on today although mainly about our relationship with Afghanistan and the rise of Wahabism from Saudi Arabia. Shows how the Americans effectively created the Afghan heroin trade and were complicit in creating Islamic extremism.
Still available on BBC iPlayer I believe.

And if you like that you may also enjoy Curtis's "Hypernormalisation" (on Youtube?) although it makes grim viewing for western populists